The steps leading up to the launch had been intense, involving multiple stakeholders, scores of different user personas, and innumerable iteration cycles spread across a multitude of design teams. Attributing the fatigue to creative block, I planned to take a few days off to recharge.

I went to art school. I studied painting until I fell out with the abstract expressionists and switched to photography. I always wanted to. I have models in my head all the time of how things work. But I didn’t know howto make to make it better.

For instance, not every designer has experience in fashion or banking. User” sounds like it does not refer to real people who have desires, concerns, past experiences. How can we design something helpful for them without feeling empathy? I started to look for a solution.

Earlier, I wrote about designing microlearning, but what I was really talking about was the design of spaced learning. So how should you design the type of microlearning I really feel is valuable? To set the stage, here’re we’re talking about layering learning on performance in a context. What (causal) models give us is a way to explain what has happened, and predict what will happen. We need to identify and determine howto represent.

I attended a recent Meetup of the Bay Area Learning Design & Technology, and it led to some insights. We had four separate discussions for each group, so everyone had a chance to discuss every topic (except us topic hosts ;). Are you doing good learning design? desig

Here are the sections of the article that drew on my thoughts: According to the futurist Ross Dawson, the world of work has always required employees to be on the front foot. The answers to both questions may well shape our employment future.

The first article in this series, “ A New Apprenticeship Architecture ,” laid out a high-level framework for using the ancient model of apprenticeship to solve the modern problem of the UX talent drought. Specifically, I discuss howto make the business case for apprenticeship and what to look for in potential apprentices. For you to get that support, you need to clearly show its return by demonstrating how it addresses some of your organization’s pain points. MORE >>

At the DevLearn conference, I ran a Morning Buzz on Learning Design Strategy. I’m happy to say that the participants threw in lots of ideas, and I thought they were worth capturing. I started with a set of questions to address, so I’ll go through their comments in roughly that order (though we didn’t exactly follow this structure): What is learning design strategy? I had in mind the approach taken by an organization to their learning design. MORE >>

Howto grow a knowledge sharing culture – a culture where people expect to share their knowledge with others and willingly ask others for help when they need it. The really difficult question is howto turn a culture around when the existing norm is, “I’m too busy looking out for myself to worry about others”. The way people come to that belief is to experience it. We only learn howto function within any culture by experiencing it. MORE >>

The process of designing any sort of human experience, regardless of purpose or platform, is centered around reaching a desired outcome, ideally with as little fuss and as much joy as possible. The purpose of an experience and the platform on which the experience takes place will vary: purchasing a plane ticket on a tablet to vacation, enjoying a musical performance in a theater, or learning to code in a classroom. Elements of learning experience design. MORE >>

Collecting data about design is easy in the digital world. We no longer have to conduct in-person experiments to track pedestrians’ behavior in an airport terminal or the movement of eyeballs across a page. New digital technologies allow us to easily measure almost anything, and apps, social media platforms, websites, and email programs come with built-in tools to track data. And, as of late, data-driven design has become increasingly popular. MORE >>